


Chasing Sunshine (Until You Burn)

by gimmefire



Series: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face [3]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:18:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gimmefire/pseuds/gimmefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I can't stay away from you."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ciao

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place between February 2004 and August 2006. AAAAAAAAAAAANGST. Beta by [Mackem](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mackem).

_February 2004._

_Knock knock knock._

That's a knock at Rob's office door. This is a problem because at that precise moment, he can't remember the Italian words for 'come in'. He wonders if he'd be safe with _entrare_ or something, but he'd probably be safer just saying come in, not least because there's been several seconds of silence and the person who's on the other side might think he's not there. Or deaf.

"Come in," he, indeed, says, not looking up from his desk in an attempt to appear absorbed in his work and not just in the very early, forgetful stages of learning a foreign language.

" _Ciao_ ," comes a familiar, faintly amused voice that sets off a pleasant tingle across Rob's skin. He can't keep back his grin when he looks up.

" _Ciao_ y'self."

Felipe grins right back at him and closes the door once he's inside. When Rob gets up to greet him, Felipe looks him up and down with some admiration. "Is strange to see you not in the yellow."

"Or with clothes on generally," Rob suggests, getting a snuffled laugh in return. He moves around the desk and reaches out for a handshake, quietly pleased when Felipe instead pulls him into a warm hug that lingers for a little too long. The word _congratulations_ is mumbled against the crook of his neck, the sensation of which fires up a familiar burn in the pit of his stomach. He's arguably more pleased with that than the hug itself.

"Is important that the test driver works very close with the test engineer, you know?" Felipe declares seriously once they've untangled.

"Yeah, but I'm not your test engineer."

"But we are on the test _team_ ," Felipe insists. Without Rob really noticing, he has hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of Rob's trousers, and he uses them now to bring their hips together. "You are a little bit mine."

Rob laughs a bit too loudly at that, but Felipe's words made his stomach do a surprisingly large somersault and his brain briefly disconnected as a result. Felipe's hips pressing insistently, promisingly into his do not help the situation. His hands move almost of their own accord, sliding up Felipe's arms to rest, wrists crossed, around the younger man's shoulders. His thumb rubs the back of Felipe's neck, making the Brazilian tilt his head forward, offering more skin to touch. Rob smiles.

"Missed you," he says, quiet and honest.

Felipe looks bashful for a scant moment, but he shakes it off with a grin. "You miss _this_ ," he corrects, punctuating his words with a gentle rock of his hips. Rob would correct Felipe right back, but the interest his body is showing in his touch and the veiled heat in dark eyes is doing terrible things to his concentration. Instead he makes a noise that he intended to be a hum but that actually emerges as a growl, and then their mouths are sliding together in a full, slow kiss. Felipe's hands move around to his ass, squeezing and pulling Rob's hips into the stimulating roll of his own. It's enough to draw a soft moan from Rob's throat.

"This is gonna be more difficult than before," Rob murmurs, dripping little kisses down the side of Felipe's neck between words. The Brazilian's languid laugh vibrates against his lips.

"I don't think you forget how to do this..."

"You know what I mean."

There's seriousness in his voice borne from caution that he can't dismiss from his mind. He'll rarely be at the races and when Felipe is at the factory, they'll likely both be busy; occasionally passing each other in the paddock will seem like living together in comparison. Whether he'd ever admit it aloud or not, and despite the wedding band still on his finger, it's an unpleasant pang that strikes Rob in the stomach at the thought of not having this, whatever this truly was. Infrequent, brief encounters at race weekends through the year had left him with aching muscles and kiss-bruised lips, but without the ability to figure this - _them_ \- out yet.

Felipe seems to take it in his stride, however.

"We have to be very good every time," he responds, tipping his head back to allow Rob's kisses to track across his throat. "So the wait for the next is maybe not so bad."

"Every time?" Rob echoes, lifting his head with eyebrows raised. "Sounds like a challenge..."

Felipe opens his eyes, hazy with indolent pleasure. "I don't know if for you is so much a challenge," he murmurs, arching up against the other man. "You do... _things_ to me."

The words shimmer down Rob's spine and stir heat in his gut, and before he considers what he's doing or, more importantly, where he's doing it, he's pushing Felipe back against the door and capturing his lips in a feverish kiss. The air shifts around their embrace and Felipe is suddenly whimpering into his mouth, gripping his ass and grinding against him. When Rob breaks for air, he finds dark eyes aflame with lust.

"How long have you got?" he asks, urgency in his low tone.

Felipe's fingers curl tightly into the fabric of Rob's shirt and he squirms, tension outlining him, like he's itching with desire and it's all under his skin just waiting to be released. But he makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and shakes his head.

_Fuck._ Rob groans under his breath, visibly deflating, the urgency spiriting out of him as quickly as it appeared. His forehead comes to rest against the top of Felipe's head. "Fuckin' tease."

Felipe laughs rather feebly and pulls Rob down for another kiss, this one no less intense but now, regrettably, in parting. It takes supreme effort for Rob to step back, to pull himself away; his chest aches a little bit too much over it. He's _missed_ Felipe. He truly has.

He takes a cleansing breath and pushes those thoughts away, settling back against the edge of his desk, taking the opportunity to watch a still flustered Felipe straighten out his clothes and smooth his hair. He offers an affectionate smile when the younger man meets his eyes. "Come find me next time you're about, yeah?"

Felipe looks at him as though he's stating the blindingly obvious, despite the colour that rises in his cheeks. "Well, for sure!"

Rob's smile breaks out into a grin. "Good," he says softly. An easy silence settles between them, neither apparently keen to break the tableau, or the other's gaze.

An urge tugs at Rob to reach out and pull Felipe into him, and to hell with whatever business he has elsewhere in Maranello. Felipe runs his fingers over the door handle by his hip, sucking on his bottom lip and staring at Rob like a lustful teenager. Rob wonders, just for a moment, if there's a flicker of something else in that heated look, something that might run deeper than he knows. Then Felipe shakes his head to snap himself out of it, and the moment's gone.

"Really, I go!" he asserts, looking vaguely embarrassed as he turns the handle.

It takes Rob a good while to fully concentrate back on his work once Felipe has left. It's partly because of the bulge in his pants that doesn't seem to want to go away without being taken care of, and partly because of something else. Words that he can't shake.

_A little bit mine._

 

It _is_ more difficult than before. More difficult than even Rob imagined.

It's three months before they see each other again for more than five minutes. Three months of flirty texts and phone calls and tantalising want and frustrating physical distance. Three months before Felipe is back in Rob's office and pressing him back against his desk, fevered desire emanating from him like headlamps on high beam and three months before Rob takes him, right there on the desk, because he can't wait to find somewhere more comfortable and he can think of an explanation for the noise of the desk thudding against the thinly carpeted floor _later_. Then Felipe's arms are looped around his neck and he's giving a wobbly smile and saying _fuck_ with almost every disbelieving, sated exhalation. The little clock inside Rob resets to zero, and in that moment, it's not so bad. Maybe he can cope if it's going to be like this every time.

But after that it's another two and a half months before they see each other again. Rob soon realises that for him, it's not enough.

It goes along like this for almost two years.

 

 

_2006._

Things gets easier when Felipe rejoins Ferrari as a full-time driver. Rob had heard good things on the grapevine about contract negotiations and drivers in the frame and the like, but when it's actually announced, he's surprised by the level of relief and happiness it brings. He pushes it down and instead concentrates on how it's his turn to do the congratulating...

 

"Do you ever think to be a race engineer here?"

The question comes after they work together, not just as part of a larger team but as engineer and driver, for the first time. It's a chilly day at Mugello, the last day of this particular pre-season test and Felipe hangs back after the debrief, giving Rob a look that encourages him to stick around too. But then comes that question.

Rob shrugs in a non-committal way, a little curious. "Don't get as much input on the car in the race team."

Felipe appears to accept the answer, and Rob can almost see the cogs turning in his head as he thinks. He leans against the table beside him. "Testing is not so fun, but I enjoy these days."

Rob can't bite back the wicked smile. "Right, because you get a shag out of it?"

Felipe looks mildly embarrassed. "Not _only_ this!" he protests. "I enjoy. In the simple way."

"Thank you," Rob responds sincerely. Felipe's eyes linger on him, long enough to make his heart beat a little faster, until he looks away towards the door, and a comfortable silence settles. Rob can only turn his attention back to his work for so long before Felipe's utter lack of stillness distracts him; his leg jiggles on the spot, making the table vibrate, his thumbnail skritches at the desk's surface. Rob sets his pen down again and leans back in his chair.

"You nervous?"

Felipe's gaze swings back to him, a little surprised. He seems to consider it. "Maybe," he admits after a long moment. He lifts a hand and places it over his heart, moving his fingers at speed to mimic fluttering. "Like this."

"Nervous excitement," Rob offers, and Felipe nods with a smile. "Well, it's not much you haven't done before, but now you've got Michael on the other side of the garage."

"I know," Felipe enthuses, eyes going wide with justifiable awe. "Is incredible."

Rob grins at Felipe's reaction. "You're gonna surprise people this year."

Felipe squirms a little, looking down at his feet. "I hope in the good way!" When he looks up again, he gives Rob a shy smile. "Thank you," he says softly. After some hesitation, glancing back towards the door, he leans down and kisses Rob, slow and full.

Rob is about to whisper _not here, yeah?_ , awareness spiking inside him that the debriefing room door is not only unlocked but slightly ajar, when Felipe breaks away of his own accord, putting space between them. He looks self-conscious and glances again at the door, and Rob wonders with a flicker of amusement if the Brazilian can read minds. That flicker dies soon after.

"Thank you for everything," Felipe says, squeezing his shoulder, something scratching at the edges of his voice.

Everything suddenly skews with those words. _For everything?_ A frown begins to crease Rob's brow and he needs to see Felipe's face, because what the fuck is _for everything_ , but the younger man has already turned away.

"Felipe--" he begins, but Felipe is already leaving. Then he's already gone. Then Rob is alone with only the worry gripping his stomach for company, wondering what the hell just happened.

 

Then it's back to the old routine, not seeing each other alone for more than five minutes, communicating by text only. Rob thinks about calling Felipe, but the desire to do so withers and dies when he notices the younger man doesn't flirt with him anymore. It's like he's just...switched off.

Rob is hurt and confused and angry and all the things he really shouldn't be, because it's just sex.

Or...it _was_ just sex. Now it's nothing. For some fucking reason, it's nothing. And he can't bring himself to say anything about it.

It's a couple of months before things change again. The change this time, however, is seismic, because meetings and discussions occur and job titles change and Rob contemplates how much more time he'll be spending away from his home and his wife, all because Felipe asks for him.

Felipe _asks_ for him.

To do the job he's been doing for many years, except...with Felipe. Rob wonders if that little exchange at the winter test was just Felipe testing the waters. But then again, he can't have known he wasn't going to gel with Gabriele, so maybe it was all a coincidence. Rob is just a logical option. The next person to try out...

Rob is starting to do his own head in.

 

Felipe sits next to him during a group briefing at Maranello before the European Grand Prix - due to be their first as race engineer and driver - and Rob is doing a damn fine job of being professional about it. Much to Rob's displeasure, however, Felipe glances uncomfortably at him whenever the focus is on neither of them, stealing the most unsubtle looks he can manage until it starts to both distract and irritate Rob. Eventually he leans over. "You didn't have to fucking sit next to me, you know," he mutters. "There were loads of other seats."

Felipe seems startled at being noticed, and fixes his eyes in his lap. "Sorry," he whispers too loudly, prompting glances from other engineers. Rob feels inclined to sigh angrily, but that wouldn't help their general lack of subtlety situation.

Wisely, Felipe waits a few minutes before he tries to be subtle again. This time, he leans close enough to whisper so that only Rob can hear. "I miss you."

Rob acknowledges it with a lingering look - doing his best to convey _this isn't the fucking time_ and to try to keep back everything else those words stir in him - and Felipe looks tentatively back at him. Then a hand reaches over, beneath the table and out of view of the other team members, and squeezes his knee, sliding up his thigh and pressing fingertips into the inseam of his trousers.

As much as it has been wrecking his head, as much as he knows he should probably swat that hand away and ask about _for everything_ and the disorientating quiet that followed, the anger, the confusion and the hurt, the fucking _hurt_ , Rob doesn't. His skin awakens under Felipe's touch, like it always has done. The flood of pleasure and near relief he feels at that moment eclipses everything else. Everything.

He says nothing, only responding by spreading his legs a fraction more.

He's an idiot and he knows it and he'll fully acknowledge it later. Later, after Felipe comes to him in his office, after Felipe presses into him, burrowing into his chest in a fierce embrace, hands feverish over his body, mouth quick to part under the press of his own. After Rob has taken the time to submerge himself in the scent, the sounds, the taste of this folly of his, because everything else has washed clean away.


	2. Need

Their first race weekend goes well. Very well. In fact, they set quite a high bar for themselves - but what else can one expect at Ferrari except high bars? Right on the back of Fernando and just about keeping Kimi at bay at the line, and perhaps more significantly, landing Felipe's first podium. He's visibly emotional up there, and Michael makes sure to reward him by doing his best to drown him in champagne. For Rob, shouting along with the Italian national anthem amidst a sea of yellow _cavallino rampante_ flags is an incredible feeling. He could get used to days like this.

 

"'Ey, that's just the right size for you."

A scowl passes over Felipe's face as he closes the hotel room door behind him, but it's gone as quickly as it appeared. Something wicked seems to occur to him, and he holds the uncorked demi bottle of champagne in both hands. "You mean for drinking, or something like..." he chooses not to complete his sentence and instead fondles the neck in the most obscenely suggestive way. Rob's eyebrows soar.

"I'd much rather fuck you with what I've already got," he murmurs, pushing the bottle aside. When Felipe lifts his chin for a kiss, he receives one that's all too fleeting. "But," Rob explains as he backs away, glancing at his watch, "Flight in two and a half hours and I've not finished packing."

Felipe closes the gap between them again. "Then you will have to be quick," he says matter-of-factly.

Rob hums in a half-interested, half-resigned way. It's not as though they haven't spent every spare moment they've had pulling each other's clothes off, in each other's company for hours and hours and anxious to take advantage of it - though they still haven't discussed the whole _for everything_ situation, nor the utterly unexplained abstinence, Rob has to admit he's enjoyed trying to make up for lost time. He also can't shake the pessimism of perhaps enjoying it while he still can.

He leads Felipe to the bed, pushing his half-filled suitcase up towards the pillows. "Sit. Drink," he instructs. Felipe appears to have no problem with this, swigging the champagne and plopping down on the end of the bed, looking quite unashamedly expectant. Rob sinks to his knees and spreads Felipe's legs with coaxing hands. "And if you feel like packing while you're sat there doing nothing, crack on."

Felipe grins and leans back on one hand, clearly having no intention of doing any such thing.

Rob unbuckles Felipe's belt and unbuttons his fly, tugging his shirt free and exposing his tanned stomach. He begins by scattering little kisses across Felipe's skin, a gentle arc of them over his bellybutton to his hipbone, then back across and higher, up to his lowermost ribs while his fingers tug those trousers down just a little more. Felipe's soft, anticipatory moan is music to his ears when his mouth returns to his hipbone and descends to the skin freshly revealed beneath it. He kisses a tight circle around the crest of bone while he eases Felipe's trousers down, down, slow and incremental, kissing as he goes and revelling in the scent and taste. Felipe moans again when Rob kisses down the ridge between his thigh and groin, skin hot and sensitive, and spreads his legs wider.

"You have a flight, no...?"

"That your way of telling me to hurry the fuck up?," Rob grins against Felipe's skin. He steals a glance up at Felipe's face, utterly relaxed and lost in the moment, and something else wells up inside him, a bitter strike of words at the back of his tongue. With a wet lick along that ridge, he murmurs, "Or are you getting tired of me again?"

Felipe whines at the brief swipe of tongue, and it seems to take him a few moments to process the words. Rob hears bewilderment flood his voice. "N-- No..."

A hand threads through his hair, pushing his sweeping fringe away from his forehead. When he doesn't look up, the hand tugs lightly but insistently until he does.

One thing Rob has learned is that Felipe is not particularly good at is hiding his emotions. The confusion is vivid in his eyes when Rob meets them; when it begins to fade, Rob can almost pinpoint the exact moment the penny drops. Neither seem willing to speak.

In the thick silence, Felipe's grip loosens on the champagne, almost to the point of letting it topple over on the crumpled duvet. He snatches it back up in a momentary panic and brings it to his chest, breaking from Rob's gaze to focus intently on the bottle instead. "No," he murmurs again, and nothing more.

With no small amount of frustration, Rob figures that's about the best he's going to get, at least at this moment in time. He takes the bottle from Felipe's hand and sets it down on the floor. His voice is soft but resigned. "Lie back."

He seems reluctant to, but eventually he complies, sinking back onto his elbows, then flat onto his back. Rob lets out a quiet sigh and scrubs a hand across his face. It doesn't help to clear his head, but he dips forward to kiss along Felipe's inner thigh anyway. _S'pose it's too much to expect better communication when all you've done is fuck--_

"I can't stay away from you."

Rob stops in his tracks, literally. His mouth hovers just above Felipe's skin, body heat and musk helping to cloud his thoughts. He's on the bed before he's consciously aware of it, sitting beside a Brazilian who's quite determinedly keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling. The words echo through Rob's head until they stop making sense, and he wants to ask Felipe to say them again to ensure he heard what he believes he heard.

_I can't stay away from you._ Implying that he wants to, but can't. Implying that he's tried to, but can't. Implying that this might not be what he should want, but does. It's a dual strike of elation and anguish that Rob didn't think was possible to feel so acutely until just now. He can hear his own heartbeat.

It's too much for him to make sense of now.

Felipe sits up and moves closer to Rob, close enough for him to feel breath against his neck, close enough to kiss. There's apology in his voice. "I am not tired..."

Rob wants to say _don't do that to me again_ , but he doesn't. He needs a better explanation, but he's not sure if he actually wants to hear it. At that precise second, he decides it can wait. He needs something else more.

He turns his head and takes Felipe's lips in a tender kiss, his heart fluttering - fucking _fluttering_ \- when Felipe clings onto him, hands in his hair, arching up into his embrace. He eases Felipe back down and his mouth and hands are soon back at work, because he needs to have Felipe squirming and moaning beneath him, he needs muscles tensing reflexively under his hands and the weight of his cock heavy and thick on his tongue, he needs _please, there, again,_ breathless and desperate in his ears. He needs Felipe to come for him.

He needs Felipe.

When the younger man is spent and sprawled and letting his breathing return to normal, Rob sits back on his legs, pushing his fringe out of his eyes. He watches Felipe's chest rise and fall, watches his eyelashes flicker as he blinks rapidly, like he's coming out of a trance, watches dark eyes turn towards him, vulnerability flashing through them, there and gone; the word _need_ rolls through his head again, stark and loud and obvious, as though it's been there for months just waiting for him to notice.

He pushes it away.

He reaches back down to the floor and lifts the champagne, taking a gentle swig and immediately grimacing. He's not too fond of the taste of come at the best of times, but now it's made decent quality champagne taste fucking awful...

Felipe has sat upright beside him, a tentative hand sliding to the small of his back, lips against the side of his neck. Much as he loathes to do so, Rob makes a small noise of dissent in the back of his throat and checks his watch. "Flight. In two hours, now."

"I think I already miss mine," Felipe says with a hint of embarrassment.

Rob quirks an eyebrow. "For me?"

"Not _only_ for you," Felipe responds. Rob feels little circles being made by the fingertips at the small of his back; whether Felipe's doing it unconsciously or not, he doesn't know, but he doesn't want him to stop. The younger man's grin fades into a shy smile. "But I tell you, I am not tired of this."

Rob regards him, struggling to widen his focus from the movement of those fingers. In the end he simply nods, because to say anything might be to say too much. Clearing his throat, he hands the champagne back to Felipe, who takes a long drink while he speaks. "Are you gonna help me pack, then? Cuz I have to clean my teeth as well, now. Unless you've got a breathmint."

The face Felipe pulls when he rights the bottle is enough of an answer, but he elaborates anyway. "I am not so good at packing. I just throw into the case, and you are very organised, so I don't think--"

Rob interrupts by waving him off, taking the champagne back. "Yeah, yeah, go on then, fuck off," he says with the utmost affection. Felipe doesn't need telling twice, trousers buttoned and almost bouncing over to the door before Rob's on his feet and looking over his crumpled clothes at the head of the bed.

"I will see you at Maranello later...?" Felipe enquires hopefully, tugging the wrinkles out of his shirt. Rob smiles.

"Yep. So you've got a whole flight to think of something nice to do to me."

The eager smile Felipe shoots his way before he leaves sticks in Rob's mind. It sticks with him while he packs, while he's on the shuttle to the airport, while he's walking briskly to his gate and while he's half-listening to the safety announcements onboard.

_I am not tired of this,_ Felipe had said. _I can't stay away from you,_ Felipe had said.

He pushes away the niggling feeling of unhappiness, because he doesn't understand its presence. Perhaps it's there because he doesn't believe Felipe's placations, but that's an ugly thought for another time. Felipe would be waiting for him in Maranello.

He's been pushing a lot of things away lately.

 

And so it goes as the season progresses. It's not perfect, naturally. Sometimes Rob is busy with work, sometimes Felipe's out with the boys and vice versa. Sometimes the weekend could've gone better and the atmosphere isn't great.

But sometimes it's different. Sometimes Rob knocks on Felipe's door when the Brazilian is just about to have a shower, and one thing leads to another and Rob's clothes end up soaked through. Sometimes Felipe stumbles upon Rob out on the town, tipsy and suggestible and a bit dangerous, and they don't make it to a hotel room or even somewhere more private than a bathroom or an alleyway. Sometimes it hasn't gone well and one seeks comfort in the other.

And sometimes Felipe asks him to stay the night.

It's a rare occurrence. It's just how it is, Rob figures; something to accept for this to work the way it does. Sometimes Felipe's just not around, plus the fact that Raffaela accompanies Felipe to most races these days and Rob has no idea if she knows the driver and race engineer relationship is a little different to the usual one. If she does, she never lets on. So Rob never begins a weekend expecting it, and thus he's rarely disappointed.

But sometimes...

Rob learns that Felipe likes to sleep. A lot. It's a wonder that he gets anywhere on time (and it's quite clear why he often doesn't). Sprawled out on his stomach, one arm dangling off the edge of the bed, the other tucked under his pillow, curled up on his side and snoring lightly, stretched out on his back with the sheets just barely covering his modesty; whatever the position he would be dead to the world. Rob suspects he'd cope with being hung upside down by his feet if it meant he could have a kip while he was there.

More often than not, Rob shows himself out without disturbing the slumbering Brazilian, but for a fond whisper of a kiss against his temple. Before he leaves, he always allows himself a few moments just to watch the steady rise and fall of Felipe's chest, the small pout on his lips, the bedheaded mess of his hair.

Sometimes Rob catches himself wondering what it would be like to wake up with him every morning, and he shoos the thought away. It doesn't always do as it's told.

One morning in Hungary he's back in his own room and getting ready to leave for the track after a quick shower, and the mental picture of Felipe's sleeping form distracts him, tugs at his heart. He absently fiddles with the wedding ring on his finger until he realises what he's doing, and then Lucy's there, in his head, gorgeous and perfect and _his_. How many times has he watched her sleep and cherished every moment of it?

He sighs deeply, rubbing his eyes. "What am I doing?"

He's alone, so nobody answers. The weight of everything suddenly flattens over his back and pushes down, down...

"What the fuck am I doing?"

 

In fact, it's during this Hungarian weekend that things change; not just because it's the first wet race in the Grand Prix's history, not just because the race is frustrating thanks to the Bridgestones simply not working as well as the Michelins in the conditions, and not just because it all leads to Felipe's lowest points score since Monaco.

Afterwards, Rob feels more mentally worn out than usual - he's grateful for the impending few weeks break - and once the debrief is over and he's spoken to Lucy on the phone as usual, he slips quietly into the depths of the Ferrari motorhome to find his driver. What he finds is that Michael has gotten there first.

The two of them are in conversation in the doorway of Felipe's room. Not wanting to interrupt, Rob hangs back, out of sight behind a partition wall but within earshot. It's not rude, he reasons feebly, just curious, and it turns out that their conversation is too quiet for him to eavesdrop on anyway. He does hear Felipe laugh, though; the wonderful laugh where his voice goes all croaky and Rob can imagine his eyes creasing at the corners. He peers around the partition, catching a glimpse of a room-brightening grin and the sparkle in dark eyes that makes his chest feel warm.

Felipe is leaning his shoulder against the doorway, bouncing against it in that perpetually fidgety way of his, focussed on Michael in front of him. He sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and chews on it while his team mate speaks, and smiles a coy smile.

Michael's hand lifts to gently pat the side of Felipe's face, lingering as fingers brush through his hair. Felipe smiles again and pulls him into a hug, eyes slipping shut when Michael murmurs something against the side of his temple, lips grazing his skin. Lips grazing his lips...

For Rob, still there, still watching, it's a bit like when you finally get the hang of one of those Magic Eye pictures. Suddenly everything has shifted and you're seeing something that you hadn't noticed was there, something that must have been screaming you in the face for a long time. He feels like all the blood has drained right out of him.

He's out of the motorhome before he's even aware of his feet moving, out and ducking around the side and feeling his heart trying to punch a hole through his ribs. He pulls his cigarettes out of his back pocket and puts them back almost immediately when he realises he's having enough trouble breathing properly as it is. After walking around in a circle he opts to lash out, slamming the side of his fist against the red wall. It makes a hell of a noise, so he clamps down on...fuck, on _everything_ , he can't even process exactly what he's feeling yet - and he's about to re-emerge from between the motorhomes when Michael appears.

Of _course_ Michael appears.

The German walks past him and slows up when he spots him glaring. Rob shrugs and looks away. "What goes on on tour, eh?," he mutters darkly.

When all he receives is a look that suggests he's touched in the head, Rob feels everything flare up inside him.

"Corinna alright with this, is she?" he calls out as Michael begins to turn away. He'd laugh bitterly at his own hypocrisy if he wasn't simmering with so much anger.

It does get Michael's attention, though. The German returns to him, his face a perfect, almost cartoonish, mask of confusion. "I think I've missed out on a conversation - or that's how it seems, anyway."

It's irrelevant to Rob at this point whether this is a good idea or not, especially out in the open like this, where anyone might be listening. He decides to come right out with it. _Fuck it. Fuck this. **Fuck this.**_ "You're messing around with Felipe."

Michael's eyebrows lift. "Ah, is there a rumour I haven't heard?"

"I saw it with my own fucking eyes."

Rob injects a special level of venom into his curse, and at that moment, there might have been a flicker of something else breaking through Michael's cool façade. Rob can't be sure.

"You _think_ you saw something with your own eyes," Michael corrects, and goes to move away. Without thinking, Rob lurches forward and grabs Michael's wrist.

"I saw what I saw," he says in a low voice. "I wouldn't mind knowing what you're playing at. I think I've got a right."

Michael meets his gaze and holds it until Rob wavers, all the while remaining unreadable. But then something changes, and a wisp of a smile appears on his lips.

"If he doesn't want you, it's not my fault," Michael murmurs. He doesn't look smug or anything, just matter-of-fact. And knowing.

"Fuck off," Rob sneers with a derisory shake of the head.

"I would, but you're still holding onto me," Michael responds coolly, glancing down between them, then through the motorhomes at the people passing by. "Maybe someone will see and think I am messing around with you..."

Rob clenches his jaw until it aches and lets his fingers slip from around Michael's wrist, watching after the German as he walks away. "Michael," he calls out, with a little more sharpness than he intended to. But the next thing he says has exactly the right amount of threat.

"If he really wants you, you had _fucking_ better want him."

He clamps down on the urge to say much more, to really kick off, to career down the path of no return; the burn in him doesn't want to give Michael the satisfaction. He takes a deep breath that doesn't do much to cleanse him, and when he speaks again, his voice is taut. "He's a good kid. And I want his head right."

Michael regards him carefully for a long time. Any hint of taunting amusement or feigned innocence has disappeared from his frame. "Of course," he replies, simply and seriously.

It tamps down some of the fire, but not enough. Once Michael is out of view, Rob sparks up a cigarette and smokes angrily, stalking back and forth behind the motorhome, cheeks hollowing with every harsh drag until it's right down to the filter. It doesn't make him feel any better. Neither does slamming the door to his little room in the motorhome behind him when he goes inside to pack his stuff. The burn will not go away.

And _fuck_ does it hurt.

Later, he departs the circuit alone.

 

The burn has switched down to a resentful simmer by the time he's back in his hotel room, flaring up occasionally when his mind unhelpfully drags something up from the depths of his memory. The close physical contact between Felipe and Michael at every shared podium. The ruffling of hair, the warm, tight embraces. The way Michael looks at Felipe sometimes. The way Felipe looks at Michael sometimes. _Not only for you,_ Felipe had said, when asked why he had missed his flight after the Nürburgring race.

_Fucking Christ, I'm an idiot, aren't I? I've been a fucking idiot the entire time._

_If he doesn't want you, it's not my fault._ Michael's words reverberate around his skull. They're right, _Michael's_ right, and it makes him feel sick.

Then Felipe's knock rings out, and he goes cold.

_Ignore it. He'll get the message and go away. It's not gonna be constructive if you speak to him now, in your state, is it?_

When Felipe doesn't get the message and knocks again, he goes against his better judgement - something he seems to have made a habit of since he first met Felipe, he thinks acidly - and answers the door.

"I thought maybe you have better things to do than m--" Felipe cuts himself off abruptly, his wicked smile vanishing, when he sees Rob's face. He actually leans back a fraction. "...You are okay?"

Rob clenches his jaw. "Pretty sure I'm fucking not, no."


	3. Him

Rob steps aside to allow a now apprehensive Felipe into his room and immediately dispenses with any notion of small talk.

"How long have you been with Michael?"

A similar look of confusion to the one Michael wore deepens on Felipe's face. Rob believes that this one is genuine. "I am his team mate since this year..."

"No, one more time," Rob says testily. "How long have you been _with_ him?"

He leaves a good half second pause after the heavily emphasised _with_ , and still Felipe looks at him in bewilderment. But then, _then_ it begins to dawn. The confusion rolls away to reveal mild surprise, and he settles on the end of the bed, dropping his jacket on the floor. "Is not so much I am _with_ him..." Felipe murmurs.

"How long have you been fucking him, then?" Rob demands, leaning against the wall opposite, folding his arms. Putting space between the two of them. "Or is that not how it is either?"

Felipe frowns at him. "No," he says quietly, hurt creeping into his voice. After a pause, he indicates to both of them. "We never say it is only us. We are not a couple, no?"

"No. I mean--" Rob shakes his head and huffs, irritated with himself for questioning whether that was the right answer. "...No, we're not a couple. Obviously."

Felipe looks at him for a long time, studies him. "Michael was close to me in 2003, this year we are closer. Is like we are...friends and a little bit more." He pauses. "This is why you are angry?"

Rob hesitates, because to confirm his anger wouldn't paint the whole picture. He _is_ upset, perhaps more than he should be, he's beginning to realise... "Do you not think that it's the sort of thing you should tell me? _Before_ a conversation like this happens?"

Felipe looks chastened. He looks away. "We did not say it is only us--"

"No, you're right, because we never fucking _say_ anything, we don't fucking talk at all about any of this shit, we never set out what this...whatever _this_ fucking is." The word _relationship_ almost throws itself into Rob's monologue, but he manages to choke it down at the last moment.

A simmering resentment settles in Felipe's eyes. "You don't know what this is after this time?" he mutters scornfully, almost to himself. His voice softens with his next words. "We don't talk because...it's better like this."

Rob scoffs. "Oh yeah, this feels fucking _great_ , this."

"Because you are being like this!," Felipe protests. "I did not think we need to be clear about how we are when is completely obvious! You tell me you do not sleep with other men?"

"No!" Rob exclaims, as though it's the most ridiculous question he's ever heard. "I'm not _interested_ in anyone else!"

The subsequent silence thuds both of them over the head. Felipe seems very taken aback. His eyes go wide and he looks down at his lap. "Oh," he says softly.

Suddenly self-conscious and feeling his heart ache at Felipe's reaction, Rob sighs and watches his feet as he digs his toes into the thin carpet. "I'm not saying _you're_ not allowed to be interested i-in anyone else--" he wishes he hadn't stumbled over his words. "I just wish you'd told me. I wish I'd heard it from _you_ , y'know?"

" _But I did not think--_ " Felipe cuts himself off frustratedly. "There is only you and Michael, and I am careful, I am not stupid, you know?" He looks hurt. "If it's only sex, why do you have this big problem?"

Rob ignores the question.

"Three years we've been at this now," he mutters to the floor, roughly pushing his fringe out of his eyes. "Three and a half, actually!"

"And we have sex maybe..." Felipe pauses to think. "...thirty times for all this time!"

Rob makes a slightly exasperated noise. "Well I dunno what _you're_ like, but I've never had sex with someone for this long if it's not..." he stops abruptly. When he speaks again, his voice is more subdued. "...if it's not serious."

The word hangs in the air. Felipe straightens his back and looks at Rob cautiously. "You think we are serious? You think we... _should_ be serious?"

Rob rather wishes he could stuff the word back into his mouth and swallow it, never to be seen again. He shifts uncomfortably and struggles to maintain eye contact. "I dunno, do you?" The tone is sulky, almost accusatory.

Now it's Felipe's turn to look away and shrug. "I don't know also."

Rob might be searching for reasons to stay angry at this point, but he blusters on, words spilling out of him nearly unbidden. "Three years after going after me like you did - _you_ went after _me_ all that time ago, with your big brown eyes and your coy looks, taking me by the hand and pulling me 'til I fell into this, and fuck the consequences - and you _still_ don't know?"

There's a long moment's pause where Felipe stares at him, and those big brown eyes are filled with hurt, hurt like Rob's never seen in them before; like he hasn't just struck a nerve, he's obliterated it. Felipe swallows, his lips pressing together in a thin line, something seemingly sparking off inside him, and he gestures animatedly. "But _you_ don't know! And, and--" here he puffs up indignantly, getting to his feet-- "You never say 'no'. Every time, I have your hand and you don't say 'no', you don't say 'go away, leave'. You tell me 'stop' _one time_ , only one time, and I stop. You never tell me to do this again."

Begrudgingly, Rob admits defeat on that particular point, that deeply wounded look on Felipe's face still echoing through his head and making it spin, chasing the fight out of him. "N-no, I didn't--"

"So you say this 'three years' - maybe after this time, you say all these things because you don't want it to be serious. Maybe you are like this because you want to finish. So you tell me to go away," Felipe demands, voice trembling. He marches up close to the other man, close enough for Rob to feel the indignation radiating from him. His dark eyes burn and his jaw is set. "You tell me to stop."

A shiver runs down Rob's spine as Felipe glares up at him. His mouth hasn't formed a reply - negative or dismissive or otherwise - before it's occupied, crushed against Felipe's in a bruising, hungry kiss. Felipe damn near yelps under the assault, but he's soon responding with every bit as much energy, teeth clashing and fingers twisting into clothes until seams strain. They fumble and pull and stumble back to the bed, almost missing it entirely in their preoccupation. Felipe falls back heavily, twisting his body until he's on his knees on the mattress, pulling Rob with him.

"So _slow_ ," Felipe hisses as Rob struggles with the buttons on his shirt, leaning back to simply pull the garment over his head, fighting bad-temperedly to pull his hands from the sleeves.

"Got an appointment with someone else, have you?" Rob sneers, earning a deadly look.

"If I did I would go to it," Felipe mutters sullenly, finally throwing the shirt aside. "I would not lose time being here."

_That_ fucking stings. They could fling barbs at each other all night or they could fuck, and really, after tonight, they've made it perfectly clear that that's all it comes down to between them, isn't it? May as well prove themselves right...

They're soon out of their clothes and tangled in each other, not bothering with the privacy of the covers. Rob groans against Felipe's neck when a hand curls around his half-hard cock, thumb circling the head, bringing a swell of arousal rushing up into him. Felipe works him exactly how he wants to be worked, fingers fast and rough, and he grunts and curses and digs fingertips into his slender waist.

Rob turns him onto his stomach, dragging a pointed tongue down the ridge of Felipe's spine, crawling backwards as he goes, pulling Felipe's cheeks apart with rough hands. _Michael been here lately?_ The thought springs up without his consent as he flexes his tongue against the tight ring of Felipe's hole, watching over Felipe's arched back as he squirms and whimpers. _Am I gonna taste him?_ His tongue passes over the twitching muscle, the smooth skin below it, flat and wet and stimulating. _Have I been tasting him this whole fucking time?_ He growls, partly in frustration at himself and his runaway thoughts, and jerks himself off, sucking on the fingers of his other hand and slathering them in spit. The way Felipe moans and pushes harshly back onto those wetted fingers indicate how much he cares for such attentive preparation, and Rob isn't exactly about to persuade him otherwise.

Once Felipe has impatiently told him of the whereabouts of the lube in his discarded jacket - because he's always _ready and willing_ , Rob thinks spitefully - Rob is bent over him, fucking him hard as he clings onto the thick wooden bars of the headboard, fucking him hard so that he might feel it for days.

"Dunno what the fuck I was talking about, _serious_...this all you're interested in..." Rob pants raggedly against Felipe's shoulder.

"Stop talking," Felipe growls, releasing his grip on the headboard to reach back and curl his fingers tightly in Rob's hair, pulling his head down until he feels a mouth against the back of his neck. Lips give way to teeth, and when they bite down hard enough to bruise, Felipe lets out a loud, hoarse moan and shudders in Rob's hands.

Rob straightens up when Felipe's grip on him loosens, putting more power into each deep thrust, and Felipe's toned body pushes back to meet each one, back arching and hips lifting and asking, _challenging_ him for more, harder and faster. When Felipe drops his head, exposing the purplish red teeth marks that are fresh and dark and angry at the base of his neck, the urge whips through Rob to leave more; his fingernails bite into tanned flesh and he grits his teeth, revelling in the sound of Felipe's moans and the wet noise of skin slapping skin, grunting with the exertion of it all.

Felipe looks at him over his shoulder, eyes storm dark and clouded with more than just arousal. It's more than Rob wants to see or deal with, so he reaches beneath them and grasps Felipe's heavy cock, jerking him off roughly, and Felipe's body spasms violently at the sudden crash of stimulation. " _Oh fuck, fuck, Rob, fuck--_ "

He muffles his desperate, loud cry in the pillow as come spurts over Rob's fingers, the sound twining with the rise of Rob's own hoarse moans. Rob pounds into him, chasing his own pleasure as Felipe sags and whimpers, and thrusts harshly through his climax until the very last traces of it are gone. He sinks forward, bending to rest his forehead against Felipe's shoulder blade, the skin slick and hot.

"Fuck," Felipe says softly, his voice squelching a little around the edges. "Fuck."

And everything is still.

Rob shuts his eyes and listens to the sound of their heavy breathing filling the air, feels Felipe's chest expand and contract unsteadily beneath him. No words, just breathing. He doesn't want to open his eyes again.

Eventually, he has to; his back begins to ache and Felipe shifts and grunts painfully, so he eases out and off, and they sink, exhausted, to the bed. Rob watches Felipe, the Brazilian propped up on one hand and trying not to sit in the wet spot, angles his body away from him. He watches the glisten of sweat across his back and the movement of his ribs, and he watches Felipe's fingertips run over the back of his neck, tracing where teeth had bitten down in a flash of anger, of jealousy, possessive and wild like he's never been before. When Felipe's breath appears to hitch, Rob averts his eyes, his gut twisting with too many emotions to name.

Felipe dresses slowly and with his back turned. Rob sits there, hopeless, words stuck in his throat.

"I think I will not see Michael again...like that."

The selfish hope that rises in Rob's heart is extinguished just as quickly as it appeared when it hits him just how raw Felipe sounds. He swallows, his throat constricted. "I said before, if you want to...be with other men--"

"I know," Felipe interrupts shortly, not meeting Rob's eyes.

Concern swells in Rob's chest, claustrophobic and tight. "Are you okay?"

Now Felipe looks at him, mild surprise sweeping across his face. He nods. "I am okay." His voice is hushed. His gaze flicks around uncomfortably. "...You are okay?"

Numb, and sore, and broken all spring to his mind, if it's even possible to feel all that at once. It's complicated further by the sight of those feelings and more reflected in dark eyes. So he just stares dumbly, then shakes his head minutely. "I dunno," he responds in a small, lost voice.

_Ask him to stay. Just ask him to stay._

He wants Felipe to stay, desperately so, he realises; he wants to touch and kiss and hold, he wants to have the calm after the storm so that together they might centre themselves again. They've never fought like that before, and maybe he's being overdramatic, maybe it's all too much for him to think clearly about right now, but Rob can't shake the feeling that everything might be sliding away. He wants to ask Felipe to stay.

But he can't. The words won't come. They're not a couple and it's just sex.

Felipe is halfway to the door. when he appears to sigh. He turns around again, looking at Rob with trepidation in his eyes.

"I was going to tell you before..." he trails off and nods at the bed uncomfortably. "I think I am going to marry Raffaela."

_Oh._

Rob looks back at him, trying not to outwardly react to the punch to the gut those words and the conviction in them bring. _Oh. That's it, then._ He swallows and cuts through the thick silence. "Good," he says softly, nodding. It's about all he can manage. "That's good. She's great."

Felipe stands there twisting the collar of his jacket in his hands, looking at him with those big brown eyes again. When he speaks, he's so quiet that Rob struggles to hear him.

"--difficult for me, but I want--"

"It isn't," Rob interrupts, and when Felipe stares at him, he offers a small, defeated smile. "It isn't difficult. Just turn 'round and go. That's all."

Felipe's eyes widen fractionally, bright with a sudden well of tears, and he shakes his head, beginning to speak but faltering immediately. His grip tightens on his jacket collar. Then he seems to drain, and his shoulders sink. Rob watches him take a couple of unsteady steps backwards, then turn away.

And then he's gone.

Rob is left looking at the closed door, his chest getting tighter and tighter. He lets out a breath suddenly, and it sounds like a sob, but it fucking isn't, it _isn't_. His face feels hot. It's probably all red and horrible. He lets out another sudden breath.

Pressing the heels of his hands to his stinging eyes, he sits like that on the bed for quite a while. Still, but for those sudden breaths.

" _Fuck._ "

He's on a plane a few hours later, back in his own home a few hours after that. Lucy greets him with a swift kiss, and he pulls her into a tight hug, guilt and anguish washing over him in ever increasing waves. When Lucy laughs softly and asks if he's alright, Rob tries to brush it off as a hard day at the office. _You sounded alright on the phone earlier_ , she says, mild concern fringing her voice. Rob has no answer for that.

It takes him hours to fall asleep that night. He can't keep it all in anymore.

In the morning, Rob tells his wife, his wife that he adores and cherishes just as much as he always has, that he's been sleeping with someone else for three years.

It goes about as well as you might expect.

 

One week passes, seven days of sleeping on the sofa - though he offered to leave altogether - seven days of aching, hushed sadness. The days crawl by. Work and shopping and average home stuff occupy Rob, and he's even more thankful than usual for the break from travel and racing because it means the chance of time to heal with his wife, not to mention time away from Felipe. Perhaps it'll help him figure some things out.

He and Lucy occupy the same tense, miserable airspace for seven days, few words exchanged, no physical contact. On the eighth day, they spend a warm afternoon outside, gardening together.

Well, not _together_ , not like they usually do; Lucy mowing the lawn while Rob cuts back the bushes, Rob nipping into the shade for a cheeky fag while Lucy tries to get his input on where to put the new plants, sharing a pint of iced tea when it gets to be too much like hard work and inevitably flicking chunks of ice at one another. Not together like that. Just...in the same garden.

When they're back inside, pink from the sun and heat, Lucy pours them separate drinks and Rob senses a shift coming, even before she leans against the kitchen counter and sighs, swiping the back of her wrist across her damp forehead. "If we're going to keep on living together, we should probably start talking again."

_Keep on living together._ Four words amidst wearily dry humour that catch Rob's attention. Living together in love, living together as husband and wife? Or living together to keep up appearances? He swallows. "I don't know why you haven't told me to leave."

"Because I don't want you to," she answers simply. "Whether that makes me stupid or not, I don't know." She sighs again, deeply this time, and looks her husband in the eye. "Can you promise not to sleep with this other person again?"

Rob can't answer immediately because he feels like the floor has just dropped away beneath his feet. Lucy continues. "It's just played on my mind - three years, the same person. Always the same person. So I'm not asking if you will, I'm asking if you _can_."

Rob sets his drink back down without having taken a sip, his stomach turning, because he knows he can't. He wonders if Lucy already knows that.

"I love you. I love you as much as the day I married you, I love you as much as I did the day I realised I loved you, I love you so much that I don't think I can explain it to you properly..." he tells her, every word the truth. Something Felipe said to him once makes itself known in his mind, and...it fits. He shakes his head in inadequate apology. "But I can't stay away from him."

He doesn't even realise exactly what he's said, initially. It just drops out of his brain and onto his tongue without a thought. The realisation arrives when Lucy stares at him with the beginnings of a frown.

"...Him?"

On the morning of his confession he'd decided the affair alone was enough information for Lucy to take in. This other person had been just that, a person. Not a him. Not a man. Up until a few seconds ago. "Fuck. _Fuck_." Rob pushes both hands into his hair.

"You've been sleeping with a man...for three years." Lucy stares at him some more before she laughs humourlessly, sinking more heavily against the counter. "I can't decide if that's better or worse..."

An acidic, choking anger at himself and the situation he's gotten into wells up like an impending tidal wave in Rob's throat, and he turns away. "I think it's equally as fucking... _shit_ ," he spits, tightening his fingers in his hair until it hurts.

"I didn't even know you liked men..."

"I don't!" he exclaims, instantly regretting his hasty denial. He corrects himself twice with a weary hopelessness. "I didn't. _I_ didn't fucking know I did. It's just...him."

Something seems to occur to Lucy as the outright shock begins to fade. "If it was a woman, do you think you would've told me sooner?"

"It wouldn't have been a woman," Rob turns back to face his wife and answers immediately, firmly. "I swear to you."

"But _if it was._ "

Rob has never even considered it. He's struggling to now, even. "I-I dunno." The harder he thinks about it, the more uncomfortable the answer becomes. "Maybe."

"Because it's easier to admit?"

"Maybe," he says again in a small voice. "I think I was waiting to stop feeling the way I felt. But I didn't. I haven't."

Lucy suddenly looks stricken, as though she doesn't want to ask what she's about to ask. "So...how do you feel?"

For better or worse, since that horrible, painful morning a week ago, Rob has been honest. Everything Lucy has asked him, he has answered truthfully, to the best of his understanding. While he may not understand much about himself in this situation, he cannot be dishonest now.

He takes a breath that hitches in the middle. "I need him. And I need you."

Lucy's face crumples and she looks away. Rob's instinct is to go to her, kiss it all away, and it wrenches at him to resist it. He clenches and unclenches his hands helplessly, then hugs his own arms. He doesn't deserve to comfort her. He doesn't deserve her, full stop. "I need you both," he mumbles, almost to himself.

Unable to stand there and impotently watch her turned back, Rob lowers his gaze to the floor. It's a surprise to him, then, when Lucy's gardening shoes appear in his field of vision, and she slides a hand around the back of his neck. She eases his head down, bringing his temple to rest against hers. He ghosts his hands over her waist and rests them at her hips, gentle and meek. She smells faintly of sweat, of grass cuttings and apple-scented suntan lotion.

"I need you both," he whispers, and chokes on his next breath.


	4. Perdido

"Please say something."

Rob looks up to find his own reflection squinting back at him courtesy of Felipe's mirrored sunglasses. They're reaching the end of their track walk on a blazing hot Thursday in Istanbul, and the Brazilian has edged closer to him so his hushed words might not be overheard by the other guys. Rob slows down some way short of the pitlane entrance, and when Giuly gives him a curious look, he motions for the rest of them to continue on.

Felipe stands with his back to the sun and pulls off his sunglasses, chuckling without sounding amused. The smile he offers is terribly pained. "I think I will go crazy."

The conversations they've had so far this weekend have been strictly professional. The conversations before that had been non-existent. No phone calls, no texts, nothing since Felipe had fled his hotel room in Hungary.

Lucy was eventually made aware of who her husband's lover was, but only after she had asked directly. Aside from an incredulous _a racing driver?_ Your _racing driver? Are you_ joking _?_ , she had decided with resignation that it was really the least of their problems. Still she did not want Rob to leave. Instead, she told him to take the time to decide exactly what he wants, beyond lust, beyond need and beyond a shadow of a doubt...and then, good or bad, they would move on from there.

Rob has had two weeks to get his head together. Now to find out whether the time has been enough.

Felipe's painful smile reaches into him and wrings him out. _It had to end sometime_ , _I know I'm not what you want but I wish I was_ and _I don't want to do without you anymore_ all crowd his thoughts, but none of them fit what's in his heart.

"I dunno what to say," he says quietly, honestly. "I really don't."

"Well," Felipe begins, measuring his words. "This is not so good, but it's also not so bad, you know?" When Rob gives him a quizzical look, he elaborates. "You do not think of anything bad to say, so it's...it's okay, maybe."

Rob eyes him. "You think I might've said something bad?"

Felipe shifts under his gaze and shrugs a little hopelessly. "I hope not."

Rob's heart becomes a little heavier, pulling a sigh from him. _I can't fucking stand feeling like this anymore._

"Come to my room tonight," he says resolutely, suddenly, before he has the time to talk himself out of it. "I don't care what else you've got on, come to my room when you're ready to. Maybe I'll have thought of something to say by then."

Felipe looks at him, visibly taken a little aback by this, caution and hope an uneasy mix in his eyes. Rob aches to reach out, to slide an arm around Felipe's shoulders, to eliminate the physical space between them, if not the emotional. He _craves_ the touch; he's the kind of person who needs bodily contact more than most, it's just how he is and how he's always been. So it takes everything within him resist it.

"For sure," Felipe eventually murmurs with a small nod.

 

And he does. It's past ten when knuckles sound out against Rob's hotel room door and the occupant feels his stomach clench. Rob finds Felipe stood outside, hand in jeans pocket, top button of his pristine white shirt undone and exposing a little more of his freshly tanned skin, hair carefully tousled. Rob mustn't be being very subtle about looking him up and down, because Felipe squirms, his gaze skittering away. "There was a party. For the Ferrari Club."

Rob nods, eyebrows fractionally raised. "Y'look good." _You look fucking gorgeous._

Felipe scoffs bashfully. "I try!"

Rob steps aside to let him in, and he takes the opportunity to get a look at the Brazilian from behind as well. Normally around about now, he'd reach out and give that tightly clad ass a squeeze, pull Felipe back into him by his hips and drizzle wet kisses over the back of his neck, purring something filthy against his earlobe, and Felipe would laugh giddily and--

"Did you think of something to say?"

Rob blinks repeatedly at the sound of Felipe's voice. "Um," he begins, scrabbling to bring his mind back to the present, the Brazilian facing him and looking at him curiously. "Um, no I didn't."

Felipe smiles, mischief flickering across his face, nodding towards the door. "Maybe I go, to give you more time...?"

"No, no, no," Rob assures with a gentle laugh, the tension in him easing. In truth, it began to ease the moment he opened the door; perhaps it was the worry that Felipe wouldn't turn up that put it there in the first place. Well, not only did he turn up, but he turned up looking the way he did.

_There was a party. He's not looking like that for me._

_...Maybe it_ is _for me. Maybe a bit._

He begins to wonder if Michael was at this party too, but he chases the thought away before it has chance to fully form, to grow black and swirling and toxic in his head. He's had enough of those kinds of thoughts, creeping up on him in the night, scratching at him, making his gut twist.

_I know I'm not what you want, but..._

And suddenly, with Felipe in front of him, dressed up and here and waiting, he _does_ think of something to say.

"You said something to me in Monaco...fucking years ago now," he says with a wan smile, rubbing at tired eyes. Memories of their night in that glittering harbour wash over him as he thinks back, their moment in that narrow entranceway, clandestine and thrilling. Closing the gap between them, he takes Felipe's hand in his own and rubs a thumb across his knuckles. "You held my hand like this, and you said 'just to be with you would be nice'. Very nice." he lifts his gaze from their clasped hands to meet Felipe's eyes. "Be with me. Even if it's only for now, even if it's only for an hour, even if it's only for tonight. Just be with me. Okay?"

Felipe looks up at him, and whether it's a conscious movement or not, he squeezes Rob's hand. He nods, voice softly surprised. "Okay."

Rob's smile broadens. "Have you eaten? I'll ring room service and get us a bottle of wine and a pizza."

"Pizza?" Felipe's gaze turns comically reproachful. "You want me to have these bad things in a race weekend?"

"Well you don't _have_ to fucking eat it," Rob retorts, laying the exasperation on nice and thick. "You can just watch me. I'll enjoy it for both of us."

"Oh, you will drink the wine until your face is pink?" Felipe punctuates his words with a couple of slightly too hard pats to Rob's cheek, laughing when Rob leans away, telling him to fuck off.

 

They settle on the bed and end up watching some Turkish football highlights on the room's television; Felipe roots for Fenerbahçe and Rob roots for the other side, just so it's fair. Felipe insists - with his mouth full, gesticulating with a half-eaten slice of pizza (thin crust, he insisted) - that there's no point, because Fenerbahçe are managed by a Brazilian, so of course they're going to win. When they eventually do, he's not _too_ unbearably smug about it.

After a brief - very brief - look at what appears to be a Turkish soap opera, Rob channel hops his way to some action film with Steven Seagal that he can't remember the name of. Not that it really matters what they watch, not to Rob at least; because Felipe is stretched out beside him, leg resting against his, pushing himself up from his more slouched position so he doesn't spill his wine as he drinks it. It matters even less when the Brazilian shifts closer, until their arms press together.

They've never done this before.

They've had pizza and they've certainly had wine, they've watched foreign telly, they've lazed around together, but they've never done it like this. This is the first time it hasn't all been a means to an end, the first time they haven't pushed the pizza aside, wrapped up in one another, lust and heat and urgency driving their movements. They've never been domestic.

Rob beckons Felipe to sit up briefly so he can drape an arm across his shoulders, pulling him just that little bit closer. There's a deeply pleasant warmth in his chest that he's only just beginning to understand, because, after that time spent sorting his head out, he's no longer pushing it away.

Felipe stretches his leg out to pull his phone from his pocket, tapping out a brief text message. Rob sips his wine and tells himself not to pry, even while he's peering at Felipe's phone out of the corner of his eye. Felipe is about to hit send when he turns his head to look at Rob tentatively. "I can stay here tonight?"

Relief sweeps through Rob, a smile wide enough to make the corners of his eyes crinkle breaking across his face. "Yeah." He brings his hand up from where it has settled against Felipe's chest to trail fingers through dark hair. "'Course you can."

Felipe peers over to the table at Rob's side of the bed, and the battered brown leather folder on its surface. "You think we should talk about the weekend?"

Rob snorts. "Not like you to be so fucking keen to get on with work. Ow!" On getting an elbow in the ribs for his troubles, he modifies his response. "Nah," he drawls, rubbing his side with his free hand. "Not tonight. This is more important."

With a shy smile, Felipe tilts his head back against the hand in his hair, closing his eyes and humming his assent.

Time slips by at an indolent crawl, and Rob is grateful for it. Felipe feels so good against him, so good fitted under his arm like this.

Eventually it's too late to be awake, what with the practice sessions looming tomorrow. Rob yawns cavernously and Felipe is sat up and stretching to wake himself from a brief doze on Rob's shoulder. Rob gives a lopsided smile. "So rock and roll, this Formula One life, eh?"

"I was comfortable!" Felipe protests, but his expression soon softens. He looks almost wistful. "Is comfortable like this."

After appearing to consider it, Felipe leans in, slowly enough for Rob to move back if he wants to, but he doesn't. Of course he doesn't. Felipe kisses him and he welcomes it, falling into a slow, gentle rhythm that skirts the edge of _too much_ and makes him feel like his heart might burst. When it ends, Felipe looks at him and exhales. It might be more of a sigh, Rob can't tell for sure.

"You are very important to me, you know?" Felipe murmurs.

Rob can't form words. Can't nod, can't respond. Can't anything. He's caught in Felipe's gaze and it doesn't just skirt the edge of _too much_ , it falls headlong into it.

When Felipe turns away to begin stripping off, Rob shakes his head sharply, rubs his eyes and tries to gather his hopelessly scattered thoughts. _Bed. Bedtime. Clean your teeth. Get undressed. Function like a normal fucking human being._

He absently counts the tiles that make up the bathroom wall while he cleans his teeth, mind a mess. No, not a mess; there's noise and clamour and too many emotions to count, but there's order to it, order because of that one truth within him that he's finally, finally listening to. It's taken months, _years_ , but he's let it get too big and too loud to ignore, so for better or for worse, he's listening.

They slip under the bedcovers, with Rob's clothes draped semi-tidily over the nearest chair, Felipe's in a heap next to the bed. Felipe settles close to the middle of the bed and pats the space behind him, inviting Rob closer, to curl up with him. Rob needs no further encouragement, shifting over until his chest meets Felipe's back, the big spoon to the little spoon. Arm draped around Felipe's waist, his fingertips stroke the skin of the younger man's stomach, making it jump under his ticklish touch until Felipe grumbles in his native tongue; Rob doesn't understand it, but he's pretty sure it's Portuguese for 'pack it in', or some kind of threat. He just smiles to himself.

Time passes - Rob guesses it must have been about half an hour, but he's not willing to unwrap himself from around Felipe to check - and he hasn't fallen asleep. He's not sure he wants to; he doubts he'll remember this perfectly enough if he lets sleep take him. And then there's the matter of who he's wrapped around and how he feels about him, maybe that's helping to keep him awake too. So maybe he'll sleep better if, for him at least, it's all out in the open. They've come this far tonight - reconciled if not truly fixed - so maybe, just maybe, he should take the chance and say something. Rob bets that Felipe can feel the sudden acceleration in his heartbeat.

"You still awake?"

Felipe makes a noise that doesn't sound like a snore, so Rob takes it as a yes. And speaks that truth within him.

"Okay. S'good, because I think I've been in love with you for a little while now, and I wouldn't wanna be telling you that if you were asleep." He swallows against the tightness in his throat, quietly terrified. "Be a bit of a waste, wouldn't it?"

Silence. They might both be holding their breath.

"...I-I didn't understand," Felipe says barely above a whisper, his voice suggesting that he understood perfectly. "You...you said many words."

"I love you."

Rob says it again, simpler this time, and it's out there, it's out of that hitherto closed off space in his heart and into the atmosphere, big and scary and honest. He steadfastly keeps his forehead pressed to the back of Felipe's head, nose buried in waves of dark hair, taking comfort in familiar scent. He doesn't hear or see Felipe's reaction, but he does feel it. As though Rob's words dance over his body, a ripple of goosebumps courses over Felipe's skin. Rob moves his hand from where it rests against Felipe's stomach to his shoulder, thumb rubbing over prickled flesh. Felipe reaches up himself and takes that hand, gripping it fiercely as though he's afraid to let go. Rob's heart soars.

Then Felipe speaks.

"You are sure?"

"I think so, yeah."

Felipe stays quiet for a long time. It might have only been a few seconds, but it certainly feels a lot longer. Rob feels like he's standing on the edge of a precipice.

Then...

"I'm sorry," Felipe says in a small voice.

And Rob's stomach drops through his feet. He shuts his eyes, doing his level best to digest that reaction.

"...Okay."

"I'm sorry," Felipe says again, squeezing Rob's hand tighter. "I am so sorry for this, Rob I--"

"Shh, stop, it's okay," Rob interrupts, pressing a kiss to Felipe's head, all while a voice in him shouts _it_ isn't _fucking okay_ and _fuck, fuck, this is so completely fucked, how did I get into this fucking mess--_ "You don't have to apologise for--"

It's Felipe's turn to interrupt. "No, no, you don't understand me, I think maybe I feel this since the time in Monaco," he says, words coming out almost faster than his tongue can manage. "And for sure I try not, you know? For sure I try, but is so difficult, impossible, my heart does not listen--"

_Wait-- Wh--_

"Hey, hey, Felipe, _Felipe_ \--" Rob interrupts again, insistently now. He pushes himself up on his elbow. "Slow down a minute, I dunno if you're making sense..."

Felipe takes a staccato breath, and everything calms down a bit. He keeps his face turned away, down, focussing on the bedsheets despite Rob's best effort to meet his eyes.

"I tell you before..." Felipe says in that same small voice. "I cannot stay away from you."

And then it's another Magic Eye picture moment. Felipe _had_ told him before, when Rob had thought he was on the brink of being discarded; perhaps he hadn't understood it then. Perhaps the meaning had changed now. _I can't stay away from you_ , because it isn't just sex. _I can't stay away from you_ , but I really did try, for both our sakes. _I can't stay away from you_ , because I...

"Is a big problem all this time," Felipe continues, making Rob re-focus. "I don't like people who are not honest, _I_ don't like not to be honest. Always I try to be very..." he puts his free hand to his head, fingers pointing upwards, and gestures forward, like a strange salute. "...you know?"

Despite everything, Rob feels a wry smirk tugging at his lips. "Straight?"

"I try to be very _correct_. I try to be a good person." Felipe's voice drops to a near whisper. "Maybe I am not so good at being a good person."

"You are," Rob says quietly but firmly without a moment's hesitation, bending his head to kiss Felipe's shoulder. "You are."

Felipe shakes his head into the pillow, anguish threading through his voice. "If I was a good person maybe I would not have asked for you to be my race engineer. I would not come to be with you before races, after races, at Maranello, I would not be here now, in this way...I would not do these things, because you have this." He adjusts his grip on Rob's hand to brush his thumb over the older man's wedding ring. Rob takes a long, slow breath in and lets it out in a sigh, eyes on the dull gleam of gold.

"You said it y'self," Rob says, his words measured. "I could've said no, I could've told you to go. But I didn't, did I? I'm as much at fault as you are." He pauses and reflects, on what he has, on what he wants, and where the two cross over. Perhaps there shouldn't be a cross over, perhaps he should have fought harder against his desires instead of just pushing it all away. Perhaps he doesn't deserve either Lucy or Felipe. He sighs again. "If you're not a good person, then I must be even fucking worse."

"I am sorry," Felipe says again after a long silence.

Rob dips his head to nuzzle against Felipe's ear, his heart aching. "I'm not. Not for this."

It's a melancholy quiet that descends, broken only by the muffled sound of sparse traffic outside and the occasional footfalls and hushed conversations of other hotel guests walking the corridor. Rob soon finds it too much to bear, so for both their sakes he pulls them away from the darker waters of guilt and shame, at least for now.

"What did you mean, Monaco?" When Felipe doesn't respond, Rob tries again. "Just now, you said something about Monaco."

"That first time. When...I took you onto the boat," Felipe begins haltingly, keeping his face turned away. "I ask you why you come, what you are there for. And you say...'you'."

Finally Felipe rolls onto his back, focussing on Rob's hand still in his. His voice is soft, timid. "I think this is when I start to lose my heart to you."

Rob's eyebrows climb. He remembers how Felipe had smiled at his response back then, how his face had lit up. "Fuck," he eventually declares, a gentle and disbelieving curse.

Felipe's lips curve up into a little smirk, colour tinging his cheeks.

"I think maybe I can stop to feel like this, so I try to be without you. Always Michael is very good to me, all these years. And...he was there for me in this way."

Though it twists him to do so, Rob can't help but point out the elephant in the room. "But Michael's married as well."

Felipe seems to shrink into himself. "I know, I know this. But he was there and he came to me and..." he trails off hopelessly. "I know what I want and is difficult for me...to not want. I tell you already, I am not a good person," he adds with a sad smile.

Pushing down on the morbid urge to ask more about Michael, about what happened between them, how long for, all the horrible shit he doesn't really want to know, Rob focusses on the weight in his chest at Felipe's unhappiness. He sighs again. "I can't make excuses for you and I can't tell you you've been doing the right thing and fuck everyone else. You know I can't. I don't think you want me to anyway." Felipe nods but won't meet his eyes as he speaks. "But you _are_ a good person. In here." He taps the space where Felipe's heart lies, and kisses it. "I won't have you saying otherwise, okay?"

The unhappiness does not leave Felipe's eyes, but it does fade. He nods minutely. Rob ducks his head to try and catch Felipe's eye. "Will you look at me now?"

"I...I try to say all these things to you like this," Felipe murmurs, before finally lifting his gaze to meet Rob's. He reaches up and cups the side of Rob's face, thumb grazing his cheekbone. "Because when I look to these eyes, this blue here...I am lost."

Rob feels his face turn crimson. "R-right," he mumbles, leaning his head into Felipe's palm and feeling just a little bit starry-eyed and overwhelmed. Felipe bites back an affectionate smile and pats Rob's cheek gently. "Also I like it when there is red here, is very cute!" His smile grows wider when Rob tells him, with equal affection, to fuck off.

A buzzing noise interrupts the moment as Felipe's phone lights up on his bedside table. He shifts and reaches over, squinting at the too-bright screen and answering the question Rob's trying not to ask with one word. "Raffaela."

A fresh pang of guilt strikes at Rob's heart, and he's a little confused when Felipe smiles at her message. Where was the anguish of before?

Felipe's halfway through his reply text when Rob decides to broach the subject of their partners. "I told Lucy about what's been going on. With us."

Felipe looks up at him sharply, eyebrows raised. His gaze flicks from Rob's eyes to his hands, to the wedding ring, then back up, saying nothing but speaking volumes. "We're sorting it," Rob says, then clarifies. "We're doing our best to sort it." Leaving it at that, he nods at the phone in Felipe's hand and adds wryly, "You've got twice the explaining to do."

Felipe chews on his bottom lip and sets the phone back on the table. "...She already knows."

Rob can't disguise his surprise, and Felipe gives a sheepish little smile before he modifies his statement. "She knows for a long time that she is not--that she can't be everything to me, there is a space in here--" Felipe taps his chest-- "that she cannot be in, you know? Is hard to explain. She knows that there is somebody else in my life for a long time, almost for the same time as her." He chews his bottom lip again and looks almost apologetic. "She doesn't know that it's you."

"She doesn't want to know...?"

"No, I would not tell her," Felipe corrects. "If things here were even more bad, it would be not so good for her to know."

Rob smirks wryly. "Would she come after me?"

"For sure!" Felipe grins, then contemplates for a moment. "Maybe now is okay to say."

A thought occurs to Rob. "Was that who you sent a text to before?"

"I was not so fun to be with for these last weeks," Felipe says ruefully. "Raffa knew it was my 'somebody else', and the problem was very serious. She is worried for me." He smiles. "I send a message to her to say maybe things will be okay."

This - arrangement? - Felipe and Raffaela have is a deep conversation for another night - or day, day is good too, is it really almost two in the morning? Shit, no wonder he's fighting to keep his eyes open - because maybe that's what Lucy was getting at. If it works for them, then it could--

"Before I tell you that I think I will marry Raffaela," Felipe says, interrupting Rob's thoughts. He pushes himself upright. "This is still the same."

Rob nods. He's tempted to say _I'm not surprised, if she's willing to put up with your bit on the side_ , but there's a time and a place for that sort of crassness, and he wonders with some trepidation where Felipe is going with this.

"Also before I try to say that to tell you I will marry Raffa is difficult for me, but I want to be clear. It does not change how I feel for you. I want you, really a lot. Not only this, I want to be with you." he smiles and shakes his head a little. "I don't know how I try to be without you."

Rob lets the words sink in, turns them over in his mind, trying to bite back the huge grin threatening to break across his face. To at least try and play it cool, even while it feels like fireworks are going off in his chest. New Year's Eve levels of fireworks.

"So..." he begins carefully. "We _are_ a couple. And it isn't just sex."

The smile on Felipe's face blooms wide. "I hope! But the sex is very important too..."

"Goes without saying, doesn't it?" Rob snorts. He scrubs a hand over his head. "Now, we really, _really_ need to get some fucking sleep. Don't think Jean would find it funny if we're both useless--"

His words are cut off when Felipe kisses him. The time abruptly becomes unimportant, because Felipe's arms are looping around his neck and pulling him in close, and there's no sting of guilt, no ache of longing for something he can't truly have, no pain of only enjoying something while it lasts. There's just the rhythm of a familiar kiss and all the gentle sweetness and deep passion that he has slowly fallen in love with over three years (three and a half, actually). Just this, and the future.

Felipe exhales slowly through pursed lips when he eventually breaks away. Rob looks at him curiously, and Felipe puts his hand over his heart, his fingers fluttering. "Like this, you know?"

"Nervous excitement?" Rob offers, to which Felipe nods. A grin breaks across Rob's face. "Mate, you've got no fucking idea."


End file.
